


Hit or Miss

by creepy_shetan



Category: Bourne (Movies), Bourne Legacy (2012), Bourne Series - All Media Types, The Hurt Locker (2008)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Community: comment_fic, Crossover, Explosive Ordnance Disposal, Gen, Military, Mistaken Identity, Project Outcome, Trauma, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-07
Updated: 2014-06-07
Packaged: 2018-02-03 22:25:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1758501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creepy_shetan/pseuds/creepy_shetan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The final deployment of Kenneth J. Kitsom. Set after <i>The Hurt Locker</i> and before <i>The Bourne Legacy</i>.</p><p>(Originally posted 2014/1/22 as a fill for a prompt.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hit or Miss

**Author's Note:**

  * For [natural_blue_26](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=natural_blue_26).



Kenny tried to open his eyes despite the blood sticking his eyelashes together. He couldn’t trust his other senses though. The blast had left a ringing in his ears. All he could smell was smoke and burnt flesh. The taste of coppery grit filled his mouth. He coughed, maybe. It didn’t help. Kenny tried to move. He gasped and bit down on a groan, certain this time. 

He’d been standing on a stone wall. Now he was behind and underneath the remains of it.

One leg really fucking hurt. Everything else seemed more or less all right. Kenny ignored the blood drying on his skin and uniform. He didn’t want to think about how much of it was not his.

Pushing some debris away, he managed to turn somewhat onto his side with one arm bracing him like a car jack and the other flat in the dirt. He tried to rub his eyes clean, but reddish brown sand simply took the place of brownish red flakes. Squinting at the glare of the sun, it took a moment for Kenny to realize what was right in front of him, not ten meters away.

Between and under the rubble, Kenny could see the damage to the back of the Lieutenant’s skull and the awkward angle of his neck. He didn’t gag, however, until he turned his head a few degrees to his left, where the IED-rigged vehicle had been, and he caught sight of what was left of the suit.

They had safely disarmed the bus with few spectators. No one on the team had seen the wires in the ground underneath it, peeking out behind each tire. At least, Kenny hadn’t. The last thing he saw his staff sergeant do was step off the bus and squat down beside it. He could only imagine the look on the man’s face right before--

Kenny gagged again. Then he rolled as best as he could away from the two barely recognizable lumps of brown and black and red.

When he opened his eyes again, it was after sunset. No one had come to finish the job after all. Kenny felt something twist in his gut, almost like disappointment.

The next moment, the feeling fell away. Just like that, he gritted his teeth, clenched his fists, and dragged himself forward. It didn’t matter that he was cutting his ventral side apart on the rough terrain, that he was leaving a trail of fresh blood behind him. He knew where he could find friendlies. He only had to make it that far. 

Others in Delta liked to joke about Kenny, about how he was useless. Some would even do it to his face, but his team never stood for it -- more than one guy backed away sporting a black eye or a busted lip. Those were the only times Kenny was sort of thankful for Serge’s crazy eyes, or maybe he was just glad that the look wasn’t meant for him or the Lieutenant. Serge would just clap them both on the back and say that it was hard to talk shit with a broken jaw. After the adrenaline had worn off and the alcohol had seeped in, Serge told him once that everyone had at least one skill, or else they’d be dead the first day out here. If Kenny had one thing going for him, it was his sense of direction. Serge said that’s why he always made him drive, and the Lieutenant nodded, saying that if he ever robbed a bank, he’d want Kenny for a wheelman. They’d toasted to that with laughs all around, and the rest of the night was a hazy distant memory now.

It had to be nearly dawn. Kenny hadn’t seen a living soul in hours. The quiet was making him anxious. He’d crawled past the central cluster of ruined buildings and the outer fringe of dilapidated shacks. Sometimes he circled around large piles of debris but other times he couldn’t avoid them. His arms were raw outside and burned inside from pulling, but he couldn’t let himself stop moving. It wasn’t much farther. There was a dusty road up ahead. He simply had to get to it. Then a Humvee would see him lying there. Hopefully he didn’t look so bad off that they wouldn’t stop to check if he was still breathing.

Kenny knew he wasn’t dead, but he didn’t feel alive, either. All he had left was a mission to move forward no matter what. His bad leg hindered his progress and made it even more difficult for the rest of his limbs to pick up the slack, not to mention sent sparks of excruciating pain with each slow drag. He couldn’t feel his fingers or toes or nose or ears, and yet the cold ground and night air hardly numbed his more central nerves. As he reached out his arms and pulled, the repetitive motion now mechanical but still staggered, Kenny thought that suffering through the night was nothing compared to sizzling under the sun and lying on top of a giant frying pan. He was almost there. He had to be. The stars were fading. A few hours in the daylight, and...

Then he heard it. Heart pounding in his ears, he paused to listen for a long moment. An engine, unmistakable now, and it was getting louder. Kenny threw himself forward with a burst of energy he didn’t think he had left, pulse quickening and lungs heaving. He reached a crest and saw that light was brimming on the horizon. One sun became three, and when the latter two were close enough he tried to yell and wave with limited success. Kenny also couldn’t sit up after the prolonged hours of his spine curved in the opposite direction, so instead he rolled over onto his back and waited. 

He shielded his eyes against the harsh glare of the headlights and heard voices speaking words that he knew but couldn’t understand just then. He wasn’t worried about why. He didn’t care. He had made it. Unfortunately, the sudden burst of sheer relief that Kenny felt and the lack of constant movement exerted on his body caused all of his pain receptors to explode before he actually met anyone.

~*~*~*~

When the patrol team’s Humvee stopped, two men jumped out with guns at the ready. Satisfied, they gave the all clear sign. A third man with a medi pack then approached the body as the other two covered him. He assessed the damage and quickly patched up the worst of the injuries in the beams of the headlights, but he couldn’t do much for a broken leg, sprained wrist, deep lacerations, a potential concussion, and who knows what else under the shredded uniform. What skin he could see was crusted in blood and dirt. The medic mentally added infection to the list as the three carried the body to the back seat of their vehicle, driving away from the scene hurriedly but cautiously.

The name on the man’s uniform had worn away, the embroidered patch little more than frayed Velcro, much like anything else on the front side of his clothing. His dog tags must have broken away during his journey. The unit patches on his arm were therefore the only identifiers. The medic didn’t have to do much to keep him conscious, but the man was in severe shock: his eyes stared unnervingly bright through the dark mess on his face and his lips never stopped moving despite the slight chatter to his jaw.

Most of the babbling was incoherent, but the medic managed to decipher one part: _Mm...K-Ke-...Nnn… J-James… K-Kit-..._

Personnel records showed a James in the IOD team in Delta squad, a Staff Sergeant William James. This man matched his general physical description. There were no recent photos readily available. Medical records were only checked for his blood type, which matched that of the sample taken. 

~*~*~*~

Kenneth Kitsom wondered why, when he had returned to his senses in the infirmary, everyone kept calling him by his middle name. During his second solid meal, it finally hit him. He barely managed to keep any food down after that.

It took two more days for those around him to figure out who he really was, and then they stared at him expectantly, as if waiting for an apology. Someone told him how far he dragged himself to where the patrol found him with something like disbelief, and another person returned his dog tags to him. He didn’t know why they bothered with either. He just cared about how soon he could get out of the desert. His injuries helped expedite that as well as the process of leaving the military.

He concluded after a couple of weeks of veteran life, however, that being stateside was just as bad, if not worse. He didn’t have a goal, or a mission, or a purpose. He knew he wasn’t the only one who thought that the only reason he survived the blast was dumb luck. 

A couple of months later, he found himself rushing into a deal with faceless suits mostly because they didn’t think he was useless. Sometime during the training program, he let them take away all of his names, whether legal or mistaken. He didn’t want any of them back anyway, not after the doses began to show positive results. 

The life Kenny knew was gone, just as everything that Kenny was died in that explosion, under that crumbled wall, with his Serge and his Lieutenant. All that he had now was what the suits and scientists gave him: a new name, a supply of green and blue pills, and a mission to complete. Aaron Cross only looked forward to what lay ahead, and he was more than okay with that. Those with the necessary clearance to access his past track record knew that he had more than enough skills that kept him alive. No one ever believed that dumb luck was a factor with Aaron.

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt: Any, any, no one else saw it happen  
> The theme: Where heroes die  
> Originally posted [here](http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/366463.html?thread=63828863#t63828863).  
> I only own the writing.
> 
> For the curious...  
> \+ I wrote most of this back in September 2012 in response to all the “Aaron Cross is [Renner character]” fan creations that popped up online, wanting to see an alternate take on the idea.  
> \+ At the time, I could cite where I found Kenny's middle name and why I wrote IOD instead of EOD for the bomb disposal unit, but now... Um... 6>.>;;  
> \+ All-around questionable realism here, since I have no first-hand military or desert warfare knowledge.


End file.
